SHOPPING SCIENCE

Ask a teenager why he's buying a certain backpack, and you might not get a useful answer. Watch a teenager as he shops for that backpack, and you might learn a few things.

That's what Wisconsin-based backpack maker Jansport Inc. did recently with the help of a Chicago consultancy that specializes in giving manufacturers and retailers a clear-eyed view of how their customers behave and -- more important -- why they buy.

Jansport aimed to find out what goes into the buying decisions of its core teen market. Traditional research methods -- focus groups, surveys -- weren't enlightening.

"Teens are not always as articulate as you might want them to be," says Michael Cisler, Jan-sport's vice-president of marketing. "They kind of tell you what they think you want to hear."

So, Jansport hired E-Lab LLC, a Chicago-based research and design consultancy that uses methods rooted in cultural anthropology to study consumer behavior. E-Lab specializes in a technique called "video ethnography," videotaping subjects at home, at work, in public places and even in their cars.

For Jansport, E-Lab used video cameras, as well as home tours and interviews, to track what teens carried in backpacks, what they thought of different backpack styles and how much influence their parents had in the final buying decision.

The findings led Jansport to redesign its packaging to better emphasize differences between its various models, such as leather vs. rubber bottoms or padded vs. standard shoulder straps.

Through E-Lab's research, Jansport also learned that many teens go "pre-shopping" with their friends well before the school year starts. Then, once they've determined what's cool and what's not, they take their parents back to the store to make purchases.

Jansport used this information to make sure that it had a wider selection of backpacks on display in stores early in the summer.

Breaking new ground

Providing such information has helped E-Lab become a leader in the commercial application of ethnology, says John F. Sherry, a professor of marketing at Northwestern University's J. L Kellogg Graduate School of Management in Evanston.

Mr. Sherry, who is trained in anthropology, believes the 40-employee E-Lab is breaking new ground in ethnographic research with an interdisciplinary approach that incorporates industrial designers, art historians and even actors to help illuminate human behavior as it relates to specific consumer decisions.

The concept was born when John Cain, an industrial designer, and Rick E. Robinson, who has a doctorate from the University of Chicago, worked together at another consulting firm. Mr. Cain was amazed by the insights Mr. Robinson could glean from social science research.

"I felt like I was humming along, then there was this weirdo from academia who identified problems I knew how to solve, and I realized there was a method to all this," Mr. Cain says.

With co-founder Mary Beth McCarthy, who handles the financial side of the business, they founded E-Lab in 1994.

While other research firms may use some ethnographic tools, the broad-based methodology E-Lab has developed, combined with the design component, has helped the firm attract major clients, including S. C. Johnson & Son Inc. of Wisconsin and Detroit's Ford Motor Co. Revenues just missed the $4-million mark in 1998, but Mr. Robinson says the company is operating at a 19% profit margin.

"This is a growth market, for sure," says Kellogg's Mr. Sherry, who predicts that ethnographic advances in the business community will come from small firms like E-Lab, as opposed to large consulting firms.

In addition to video cameras, E-Lab uses beepers and customized notebooks to get consumers to answer questions about their actions and moods throughout the day. These observation techniques help businesses see how consumers behave, as opposed to just hearing what they say they do, Mr. Robinson says.

Consumers tend to think their routines are mundane, he adds, and therefore won't volunteer information that product makers might find interesting -- say, that they've taught the dog to drink water from the refrigerator ice dispenser, or that they eat cereal for dinner twice a week.

Such behaviors are watched and analyzed by E-Lab project teams in what Mr. Robinson calls "a Socratic" environment. Team members watch videos, read responses and argue about what behaviors mean. The staffers' varied backgrounds -- ranging from linguistics to economics -- can make for some heated debates, Mr. Robinson says.

"Other companies trying to do this hire only cultural anthropologists. But when you think about it, actors are trained to look at gestures and analyze why people do what they do," Mr. Robinson says.

E-Lab is currently working on a project for Massachusetts-based camera maker Polaroid Corp. to help identify the potential for new products. Polaroid, which has seen revenues decline in recent years, hopes the research will "foretell the future of imaging."

The research process includes going into consumers' homes and asking them about their cameras, looking at which are used often and which are covered with dust. E-Lab researchers also observe which photographs are displayed and which are stored away in shoeboxes.

New consumer categories

Philip W. Swift, vice-president of corporate design for Polaroid, expects E-Lab's analysis will usher in a new product within a year to 18 months.

But more important to Polaroid will be how the research changes the way the firm segments its audience. Mr. Swift thinks broad categories such as marital status, gender, age and income will take a back seat to new categories that could be created by observing consumer behavior.

"I think this could replace traditional segmentation," he says. "But this is one of those things that is a science as well as an art," he says. "You have to have the right kind of warped personalities to pull it off."